5th Battle for Ehdiciun VI

Again, the lines were drawn just before the sky brightened for the morning dawn.  Both armies found themselves arrayed against one another and seemingly fighting for an ancient Adeptus Mechanicus ruin.  The same power crystals were in the area, so this macine must've been useful, but neither commander understood how or why.  Mazarius was impressed that such an ancient structure stood so intact on this otherwise uninhabitted planet.  Kharsis' view from the air of the ruin made him want to wretch, angry at the oppulance and craftsmanship from this lie of an empire.  Better, though, were the scattered pieces of armor and machinery needed for equipment used by both forces, making this battlefield conveniently productive.

The 5 objective points

Deployment and the start of the game, as seen from the south

End of the game, as seen from the west

We still played 1000 points (again, same armies), but this time we played the Big Guns Never Tire scenario.  Rolling for objectives, my brother rolled a '6', meaning we used all 5 objective points.  Placing objectives on a 4x4 table and not getting too close to each other or the edges is rather difficult, by the way.

Night fight was in effect again.  I'm thinking that GW meant for night fight to hopefully mitigate 'alpha strike' armies, which I like.  But it appears that our armies like to fight early in the morning.  Our warlord traits were wonky this time- Mazarius was allowed to reroll run rolls for nearby units and Kharsis allowed rerolls of '1' when shooting at me near an objective.  Needless to say, these had little effect on the game.  I rolled to deploy and go first, and I took advantage of it.

Here's the deal- in today's game, his dice were against him.  Let me tell you how bad it was...
His Defiler played the artillery role and fired four times in the game.  It killed one model it wasn't even aiming at, put one hull point on the Dreadnought, and missed two other times.  A Defiler, with a Battle Cannon, killed one single marine all game.  ONE!
He rolled twice to bring in the Raptors, needing a 3+ of course.  Turn two, he rolls a '1'.  Turn three, he rolls a '1'.  Turn four sees the squad arrive automatically, but really?  Two times to roll a three or higher and he couldn't do that?  TWO!
His squad of seven krak grenades assaulted the land speeder and hit three times, only to glance it once.  Then the Daemon Prince assaults the thing, hits once and fails to beat the armor.  That same prince died (finally!) because my brother couldn't make three armor saves across four turns.  THREE!
By the end of the game, I had killed all 20 chaos marines, two possessed, the prince, and a raptor.  I had lost the five devastators (two having died by my brother's actions, the rest simply fleeing from the field), three marines from the Combat Squad (one having killed himself with plasma), and one marine from the Command Squad (also having killed himself with plasma).  In the entire game, he had killed four total models.  FOUR! 
And the whole game had been like that.  His armor saves weren't horrible, but his shooting was worthless and his wounding made every other roll seem like a waste of time.

It should be pretty obvious how stunning this is to a newbie.  If nothing else, this was a lesson in how badly the dice can control a game.  When they work, they work.  Whey they don't, these games can be a whole lot less fun.  I joked with him and offered that maybe his 'beginners luck' had finally run out.  It didn't matter.  On top of a poor showing by his cubes of probability, Uncle Sam was also bashing him with additional duty this weekend (as I said, he's a soldier.  It's not as fun a life as the movies make it).  So my jokes definitely didn't work.  He did, however, say that it won't happen again.  I fear that to be true.  It was nice to be on the giving end of bad luck for once.  :-)

The game ended with me controlling one objective and getting first blood and slay the warlord (finally!).  He had killed my Devastators and could have scored an objective with his Defiler, but we knew there'd be no point.  The official score was 5-1, but was really 5-4.  In any case, I actually won the game.  Sooooo....

I guess it's onto the next battle and what that may be.  If anything, maybe I'll build and paint up a few more buildings and start transitioning into the urban areas...  Eh, I have painting to catch up on.  So much to doooooooooooooo!  (and that makes me happy!)

Happy Gaming!